In general, in known hanging and conveying devices of the above-described type, the coupling means are specific for a given type of vehicle body; in consequence, a change in the type of vehicle body necessarily entails the reconfiguration of each arched member, by substituting both the mentioned coupling means and their mountings on the arched member.
Obviously, the above-mentioned reconfiguration operations require, on the one hand, quite long line stoppage times and, on the other, the need to store a significant quantity of substitute parts in the warehouse.
To obviate these problems, some solutions have been proposed in the past with the object of adapting the structure of the coupling means to the vehicle body to be carried, and therefore of having to resort to their complete substitution every time.
Solutions of this type are described, for example, in WO2005/077790 and in JP7089609, in which the coupling means comprise a pair of longitudinal members, each of which is equipped at both ends with a pin to couple with and support a vehicle body. To allow the selective mounting of mutually different types of vehicle bodies on the arched member, the distance between the pins on each longitudinal member can be modified either by the telescopic lengthening of the longitudinal member, as in the case of WO2005/077790, or by the sliding of one of the pins of the longitudinal member along a longitudinal guide integral with the longitudinal member, as in the case of JP7089609.
Both of these solutions, besides giving just limited “adaptability” to the arched member, suffer from the drawback of introducing significant structural complexity with the negative consequence of increasing costs and reducing the reliability of the vehicle body hanging and conveying device.